SG - What Is It Like to Be a Bat?

We look into the eyes of a dog and imagine we know what the dog feels and how he or she shows it. The dog feels close to us: we live together, we sleep together, take long walks, and it is also a mammal, like us. The bat is a mammal too, but maybe the one that differs the most from our way of being in the world. At the same time we seem intrigued by this difference in how they orient themselves in the dark, their wings between the fingers, upside down sleeping and often matriarchal social structures.

In this series we try to get closer to the bat looking at how we capture them in our cultures, in our knowledge and in our art. And we look back on the famous article of Thomas Nagel ‘What is it like to be a bat?’.

Dennis van Tilburg is a multidisciplinary artist with a fascination for sound, music, and consciousness. His work often forms a strong connection with landscape and nature. With a DIY mentality, Dennis creates interdisciplinary projects that transcend the usual boxes of art. Dennis develops installations and idiosyncratic musical instruments. In his music, natural sounds and electronic tones balance together on the boundary where it falls apart into fragments and loose elements unexpectedly form a wondrous harmony.

Dennis was associated with the PeerGrouP for a long time, where he created various performances about our connection with landscape and nature. For every work, he delves into technical possibilities to create new worlds. In his fascination with consciousness, he explores meditation, (Eastern) philosophy, and cognitive science.